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“—but that wasn’t what I was doing today. You owe me nothing.”
“See?” I asked, and Olga nodded. And then threw up her hands, because they clearly didn’t see.
“You say that now,” White Hair said, in perfect English. So I guess he’d just been being a dick inside. “But when the time comes, you’ll call in the debt, and throw us in front of your own troops to spare their blood. We know how you see us, fey king. We know how all of you see us, as nothing but animals—”
“My daughter-in-law is not an animal,” Caedmon said, his eyes on her.
Like mine should have been, I realized, because Claire was looking a little . . . odd.
It wasn’t physical. She was the same slender girl in an old-fashioned floral print dress, which should have made her look dowdy but somehow never did. All she needed was a big, floppy-brimmed straw hat, her hair in messy braids, and a wheat field to model for one of Vogue’s “Girls of Summer” covers.
And a different expression.
A really different expression.
“Claire?” I said, and got a low, rolling growl in return.
Uh.
“Maybe we should go inside? Check on that soup?” I began, only to be cut off by raised voices from the crowd.
This time, they weren’t in English, so I don’t know what they said. But whatever it was prompted a quick interjection from Olga, who wasn’t looking so concerned with etiquette anymore. There was some yelling and gesturing and then—
“You lie!”
It was Hothead again, and I was beginning to understand how his face got like that. I was hankering to chain him to the back of my car and drag him for a few miles, and I’d just met him. But if pain hadn’t taught him something before, it probably wouldn’t this time, either.
Not that I got a chance to find out.
Not before he jumped for Claire.
Annnnnd that probably wasn’t his best move, I thought, stepping abruptly back. Or what he’d expected, judging by his expression when his back slammed into the ground, hard enough to tremble it. And to add some rocks to other parts of his anatomy as he thrashed around, in full-on panic.
And went nowhere.
Because the taloned claw suddenly pinning him to the earth didn’t belong to the girl I knew, or even to the cute baby dragon I remembered. But to something else entirely. For a long moment, I just stared.
The first time I’d seen Claire in her alternate form she’d been . . . well,
frankly, adorable. I’d still been weirded the hell out, because dragon, but even then, I couldn’t help noticing the absurd tuft of purple hair between the two little glasslike horns on top of her head. And the tiny black wings squashed against the ceiling in the hall, because she’d transformed in a too-small space. Or the, um, healthy thighs and butt, neither of which those wings were gonna be lifting anytime soon.
Of course, I could have been wrong about that.
Because it looked like baby was all grown up.
The fat little haunches were currently sleek and gleaming with a river of pewter scales. The wings were huge and thick and heavily veined, blocking out much of the sky. And bisected by a ridge of amethyst that had been just a smear of color up the spine last time, but was now a line of crystalline structures, like they were literally carved out of semiprecious stones. And the ridiculous tuft of hair was now a full-on mane, falling between two massive, translucent, curled horns.
She was beautiful, if a twenty-foot embodiment of death can be described that way. Or, rather, twenty feet if you didn’t count the tail, which was long and spiked and thrashing around, digging out great swaths of grass and telegraphing her mood all at the same time. A mood that could obviously be summed up as face-eating furious.
I didn’t want to see her eat the troll’s face, despite not caring for it much.
Because I did care for Claire, and I didn’t know how she would take that once this was over.
Scratch that. I knew exactly how she’d take it, considering that she planted freaking marigolds around her garden to ward off pests, so she didn’t have to kill them. So, yeah. Time to save the asshole troll.
Only problem was, how?
I glanced at Olga, but she wasn’t much help. She was just standing there, blinking slowly. Because yeah. She hadn’t been there before, had she? And while she’d known what Claire was, knowing and seeing are two different things.
